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Amazon RDS vs PlanetScale comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (2nd)
PlanetScale
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PlanetScale is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon RDS1.3%
PlanetScale1.1%
Other97.6%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2592669 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Positive experiences with database services, with minor room for feature enhancements observed
I don't really see any disadvantages of Amazon RDS. With Oracle, I think AWS doesn't provide the RAC stability. If you have Oracle installed in your own data centers, you can set up various clusters and we can set up the RACs, but in Amazon RDS, we cannot have the RAC feature of Oracle. They could add that feature. Amazon RDS has limitations regarding RAC. If we talk about installing Oracle in RDS, we cannot have the RAC, but if you deploy Oracle on GCP, then there is probably the RAC feature available. I observed that around two or three years back, but I'm not sure whether they have added the RAC feature in AWS. Amazon RDS is expensive compared to GCP. GCP also has the same features, and although it is quite extensive and feature-rich, I see Amazon RDS as slightly expensive compared to other clouds.
Shrikant S - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at RanceLab
Query insights have cut infrastructure costs and let full‑stack teams manage databases independently
In my opinion, the best features PlanetScale offers are recommendations and statistics on queries. Insights on queries have helped me and my teams significantly. For example, once while I was a CTO at Commutech, I received insights from a query that showed one specific query which checked permissions was selecting all permissions for a user instead of selecting a specific row. This increased the load on the database. Receiving that one insight helped me rewrite that query to only select the permission that needed to be checked, which made scaling possible. Such insights that pinpoint exact problems help in resolving scaling issues. PlanetScale positively impacts my organization by greatly improving productivity and saving significant costs. Typically, if I were to manage my own database, I would need someone to manage that infrastructure, keep updating things, and maintain backups. PlanetScale handles all of that, including backups. We can restore to a point in time using PlanetScale. All these things would normally require a specially skilled person to manage a database. Instead of that, we can have the full-stack developer developing the product manage the database themselves instead of hiring a specialized person just for management. Rather than spending on a DevOps person, we can spend that budget on a developer and build more features instead of spending money on just maintaining infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product solved our DevOps and admin problems."
"The product's installation phase is easy."
"Amazon RDS is quite a well-managed and stable service...The initial setup was very easy."
"It's very useful to save customer's data in a secure manner, we can easily handle all the customer records with encryption mode."
"I recommend RDS because it makes your life super easy."
"I use Amazon RDS to support scalability, with multi-AZ support being an essential aspect."
"It significantly reduces database management overhead."
"I use Amazon RDS to store and manage data securely. It helps me retrieve information and gain insights from the data that comes in for my business or specific applications."
"I like the solution's developer experience. When you deploy changes to the database in the portal, you can use different deployment strategies and see how things work. You can put changes into different branches, like deployment and staging. This is built into the product, allowing you to navigate changes through different branches."
"The solution is beginner-friendly. Like any new platform, it can be a bit confusing at first. But after spending about an hour with it, you can get a clear idea of what everything is for. It's not very confusing; I think they've improved it recently."
"PlanetScale positively impacts my organization by greatly improving productivity and saving significant costs."
"I recommend using PlanetScale as it provides ease of access and control over database changes using commands from the local terminal."
"One feature I appreciate about PlanetScale is its ability to handle migrations and commands without the need to run them manually in the database."
"In my opinion, one of the best features PlanetScale offers is the ability to lock all changes to the database, so no particular developer can do changes that could break things for others."
"The database is accessible 24/7, ensuring my project runs smoothly without interruptions."
"The branching feature is also good for developer experience."
 

Cons

"The security features could be improved."
"The only thing that needs improvement would be the pricing of the solution."
"In the next release, it would be great to see RDS provide connection pooling out of the box."
"The setup might be a bit challenging for multi-level applications."
"The running cost could be improved."
"Currently, we are using Fargate. Instead of that, we are planning to use EC2 instances, but we are facing some problems, and we are unable to enable NAT gateway for Elastic Load Balancer. When we enable auto-scaling, the instance count increases, and we get IP addresses dynamically. We need to whitelist the IPs of these instances, but there is no option to whitelist those IPs in Amazon RDS. We need one static IP that we can assign to ELB so that we can whitelist this IP."
"Technical support could be better."
"Amazon RDS should have a more user-friendly graphical user interface and include better database management options."
"When I tried to integrate the solution with Firebase for authentication, I faced some interruptions. Also, when using it with Next.js and NextAuth.js for Google and social logins, I had some troubles."
"Recently we started noticing that because of the distance between the database and the server and our particular field, there may be some lagging and that may not be acceptable."
"The main thing I didn't like about PlanetScale was that we couldn't run analytical queries on it."
"Regarding needed improvements, I wish PlanetScale would have a free tier so that startups could try it and then opt in for a paid feature."
"I would like PlanetScale to have a feature where the database can be accessed in the cloud with a link, allowing for a more user-friendly interface compared to the terminal."
"I used PlanetScale for hobby projects, so my perspective differs from someone using it commercially. Unfortunately, they've removed the free tier in recent months and pivoted to a business-to-business model. This is sad for hobby developers like me because it's a great product, but I understand they have costs to cover."
"We encountered some initial issues during the product deployment, which required me to search for solutions on forums."
"I am not sure, but I think recently, the tool removed the free version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my case, MySQL is free, and if there are any costs, then it is much less than other solutions since all such things usually come bundled with the hardware."
"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."
"The product is expensive."
"Amazon RDS is less expensive than other solutions."
"The platform pricing is on the higher side, but given its capabilities and ease of use, it remains competitive."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The cost of using this solution is similar to that of having your own data center."
"AWS is becoming pretty expensive because cheap or absolutely free services have become paid services. Amazon RDS is not an expensive product, but Amazon's ecosystem is becoming increasingly expensive."
"Last time, when I wanted to use the tool in a project, I could see it was only paid, so I didn't use the service."
"I am currently using the product's free version, which has been sufficient for my portfolio project."
"The solution is expensive for beginners. That's why I wasn't motivated to use it more. But they were already providing many features for free for beginners, which was great."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
33%
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
I think Amazon RDS can be improved or enhanced if it can be implemented with other monitoring tools such as Percona. Currently, I am trying to add Percona monitoring for monitoring in addition to i...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
Amazon RDS is typically used for AI applications. I am developing it for an AI recruitment agent and for collecting data for HRIS, Software as a Service for a workforce as a service, and storing data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PlanetScale?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that pricing is good enough to be used at enterprise level. It is not cheap, but it is appropriately priced. I do not find it costly at all.
What needs improvement with PlanetScale?
Regarding how PlanetScale could be improved, especially considering my experience so far, if it were possible to handle the lagging problem, I suppose it is something that cannot really be changed ...
What is your primary use case for PlanetScale?
My main use case for PlanetScale is that currently, in the company, we are considering changing our current local database to PlanetScale for stability and other benefits, but it has not been deplo...
 

Also Known As

RDS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmodo
Block, Intercom, Convex, MyFitnessPal
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. PlanetScale and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.